


vicissim

by imgonebye



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: F/F, emily prentiss is a lesbian, single parent JJ, some mention of Emily/Jordan, some mention of JJ/Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-10 01:10:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5562964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imgonebye/pseuds/imgonebye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...something clicked in JJ’s heart when she looked up from her infant son and saw Emily doused in light in the hall, looking for all the world like she belonged there, like she was a part of that home. season 4 AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	vicissim

i.

It all started when she was tired, pregnant, and hormonal, showing Jordan Todd around the BAU office, horribly aware the entire time of how easily she was being supplanted.

If she'd had a better support system, she could have kept at it part time, but that all went out the window when Will asked her to quit the BAU for him—for their family. He couldn't leave, of course. All the powers that be, from government to Nature, had dropped the ball on Katrina, and he was still picking up the pieces. He'd spend his whole life picking up the pieces, JJ realized. And even when there were no more pieces to pick up he'd still be looking, still deeply convinced that New Orleans's deeply scarred psyche could be healed if he just—what? Will didn't know, and neither did JJ. What she knew was that Will talked like a man possessed, the same frenetic rhythm that the frenzied mother of a kidnapped daughter or heartbroken husband of a mutilated wife increasingly spoke in as time passed and passed and the trail went dead and dead and deader. So when he asked her to leave the BAU, she asked him to leave New Orleans, and he laughed and told her that babe, the people _need_ me.

And that was that. There would be other things, like when he called her a stubborn bitch for refusing to uproot herself for him, or when she worked increasingly long hours just to avoid him so he showed up at work to talk and they argued in furious stage whispers in her office, until Hotch or Morgan or Emily knocked on the door with some invented emergency just to break up the tension. There were all those obvious reasons, but the real point of fracture was when he dared to laugh at the BAU. Because it was important to her. Because she was proud of what she did, proud of the lives she helped to save and the families she helped to heal, and Will saw her job the way she'd initially seen it. Communications Liaison sounded like a desk jockey, a junk position to keep the profilers doing what they did best, instead of doing all the tedious interfacing with families and friends and media. But it had only taken her two cases to see that holding Grandma's hand and coaching her to say _her name is Margaret but she likes to be called Maggie, she's only sixteen and bright as can be, she plays soccer and collects snowglobes and she's got to be so scared and you don't have to hurt her, she's been through so much, her parents died and we're all each other has so please, please bring Maggie home_ for the cameras was often just as important as knowing that the man who took Maggie was in his late thirties, socially reclusive, and not quite sure what he was doing because when you put those two things together, Maggie survived and went home to Grandma and two years later she called 911 when Grandma had a heart attack and saved her, and she started writing to JJ then because she knew she was the one who manipulated this so that they didn't both die alone, and now she works for a sex crimes unit in Detroit and saves trafficked kids and that's lives on lives on _lives_ , all weaving their threads of fate together into a web that keeps JJ at her job. And Will never got it, which meant he never got _her_ , which meant she couldn't possibly be comfortable with him after that, because his love was complacent, reliant on a status quo in a world with no stability.

Agent Todd was appropriately sympathetic when she heard that the father was no longer in the picture. It was almost offensive, how kind they all were.

JJ recognized the naivete in her eyes because she'd had it once too, and she was struck by the sudden realization that Jordan would never work with the BAU again after she returned. It was like drowning, JJ realized as Jordan scanned the room with quick, intelligent eyes. You had to be submerged because it had to kill every last bit of you that wanted to quit every time you saw a dead little girl with the hem of her dress torn off and tied around her neck. And Jordan would get out just in time to leave that office and feel the horror outbalance the good, and listen to the part of her brain that screamed _RUN_.

Jordan gently poked her on the shoulder with a humorous smile full of perfect white teeth. "Earth to mama," she said, and JJ laughed.

"Sorry. It's been a long week," she said. "What were you saying?"

"Can you introduce me to her?" Jordan's expression was guarded and she looked out over the desks below them to avoid meeting JJ's eyes.

For a moment she thought Jordan meant Penelope, and was ready to joke about Jordan having a record she wanted expunged, because Penelope was so good that she could convince your parents you'd never existed, but then she followed Jordan's eye-line to the dark hair and long legs perched on the side of Morgan's desk, thumbing through a worn and dog-eared copy of _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ , and she realized.

"Emily?" she asked, just to be sure. At Jordan's nod, slightly hesitant, she smiled. "Sure."

She thought about mentioning that she didn't know if Emily was into women, but she figured Jordan would have already thought of that. JJ figured there were a lot of things that she had already thought of, like the odds of a single mother being able to come back for her job with a newborn baby claiming all her time. And speaking of being _into women_ , that kind of thing didn’t really matter when you looked like Jordan Todd, JJ figured. Even someone as staunchly opposed to relationships as Emily would probably be interested.

Oh, she thought. Oh. Staunchly opposed to relationships indeed. Staunchly opposed to relationships _with men_?

She must have been making a face because Jordan looked at her with a critical expression and a slight pursing of her lips. Defensive, maybe regretful—she’d taken a risk, and now she found herself wishing she hadn’t. JJ lived and breathed profile, so she got the basic nuances of how aggressive personalities reacted to being cornered. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“No,” JJ said. She allowed herself a small, indulgent smile—one of those pregnant woman smiles, accompanied by a hand gently cradling her belly, that drew attention to the plumpness of her cheeks and the swell of her stomach and the little life growing inside of her. “I’m sorry—he just kicked. I’m still not used to it.” It wasn’t an honest thing to do, but she was finding more and more each day that she didn’t have much integrity when it came to blaming her unborn child for her own faux pas.

Jordan looked just a little bit mortified. “Sorry,” she said. “I just—”

“No, it’s fine,” JJ said. “You’ve got every right to be defensive.”

“I just assume the worst,” Jordan said ruefully.

“I can imagine,” JJ replied. Then, after a beat passed and she realized: “No I can’t.”

From her periphery, she could see Emily turn to watch them, conversation clearly winding down. Henry kicked, for real this time, and she felt something rise in her throat, like bile but cold and visceral. She wanted to puke, or maybe to fly down to New Orleans and kick Will squarely in the balls. She had been fine, even when she was puking her guts out every goddamn morning, and now she wasn’t.

This was all so fucked up. She wanted her job, _and_ her life, _and_ her baby. If only Will hadn’t abandoned her, if only she’d had an abortion, if only she’d just left well enough alone and been one of those women who drank a little bit too much at parties and joked about how repressed they were.

She would have felt better if Jordan was unattractive, or incompetent, or one of the score of women who threw themselves at Morgan’s feet, because she’d seen that and she knew how that always ended. But this was new, and different, and fucking terrifying.

“Thanks,” Jordan said, breaking eye contact. “For not being all fake-empathetic, I mean. And for—you know.”

“Yeah. It’s no problem.”

She felt very small and very mean when, weeks later, Emily joked about ‘viable donors’ and the edges of Jordan’s laugh were very obviously brittle.

ii.

JJ held Henry in her arms and gently smoothed the downy blonde hair that he'd mussed in his sleep. She knew, logically, that she'd just squeezed a nineteen-inch, seven pound living thing out of her vagina, but it didn't seem that bad, now that she thought of it. She knew there had been pain like nothing she'd ever felt before and that there were red half-moon nail marks all over Will's hand to prove it, but it all seemed so warm now. She'd been told about this by everyone from her mother to Reid, about how she'd forget how much it hurt because that's how human biology ensured that the human species would achieve population growth.

He was a beautiful baby, she decided. Didn't take after his dad at all.

Will had grudgingly taken a few weeks off to see his son, after JJ had called him and all but reached through the phone and slapped him upside his chiseled face. It was sad, really, that it had all come to this. Emily and Penelope had held her hands until she growled _Will get over here right now so help me God_ and shooed them out. They sat by her side for hours, but Will showed up to his son's birth with a hangover and the stubbly proto-beard that she knew he got when he didn't shave for a week. She didn't care, really. At that point, she was only insisting on his involvement to spite him.

It was Penelope and Emily who brought JJ and Henry home to the dark, empty apartment while Will went back to his hotel room and refused to answer his phone. Penelope even insisted on wheeling JJ ("and my _godson_ ") out of the hospital, grinning from ear to ear and nodding proudly whenever anyone complimented Henry or congratulated JJ.

JJ didn't know how they knew just how embarrassed she was by single motherhood, but she was too exhausted to feel anything other than gratitude when Penelope answered a big, beaming "Yes!" to the nurse who asked them if they were a couple while they waited for Emily to bring the car around to pick them up. Because it was terrifying, the idea of going at this alone. She knew that her choice to not have an abortion when she left Will could very well spell the end of her career—she couldn't leave Henry alone to go to work, and the very idea of finding someone to watch her infant son during her variable work hours (which had no constant except for their length) was daunting. She'd always nursed somewhere in the back of her mind the impression that single mothers were irresponsible, but that had died out very quickly, around the same time she'd decided against an abortion. Maybe she could have seen this coming. Maybe she couldn't have. It didn't matter anymore, especially not when Henry reached out and took her finger in his little hands and made a soft sound that was so small and tentative that JJ felt tears prickling behind her eyes.

"Oh, look at him," Penelope cooed as she clicked into the room as quietly as she could manage in kitten heels. "I could just _eat those widdle toes_..."

iii.

“He’s an ass,” Emily says, and even Penelope drops her optimism and nods agreement.

“He’s—”

“A jerk,” Penelope interrupts firmly. “He’s a jerk.”

Emily nods emphatically and finishes her glass of wine.

“He’s doing more now,” JJ protests, feeling a little bit bad. “He’s watching Henry tonight.”

“Hey, whoa,” Penelope says. She reaches out to snap her pink lacquered fingers a few inches from JJ’s face. “Nuh-uh. Do not do this to yourself, sweetie. One night watching a child does not a father make, capisce?”

“Biologically—”

Emily cuts Reid off before he can finish the sentence. “Biological relation isn’t the only criterion for parenthood,” she says. _You know that_ goes unsaid. A lot of things go unsaid, but the tacit implications thicken the air until JJ thinks she needs space to breathe and think. It’s not just the visible issues—Penelope’s dead parents and Reid’s institutionalized mother and distant father, the low-hanging fruit on the great big trauma tree that is the BAU—but the invisible ones, the ones that are felt but never articulated.

Like how Emily hates her mother, for instance. Not that she doesn’t try to hide it, but—come on. She was going to quit the BAU over politics, she left Yale with only a BA to her name (not nothing, but not _something_ ), and don’t think JJ hasn’t noticed the muscle that leaps in her jaw whenever someone says _Prentiss? Like_ Ambassador _Prentiss?_

“I hope he has to change a _lot_ of diapers,” Penelope says, then shakes her head again. “What a _jerk_.”

“Let’s not talk about him,” JJ says uncomfortably. “It’s my night out, okay?”

“You wanna talk shop then?” Reid jokes, and they all grin.

“Was that a joke, boy genius?” Penelope is smiling, but it’s brittle.

This isn’t funny, they all know that, and in about half a second they will shudder and change the subject. All of them except Emily.

JJ knows everyone else must see it—they’re profilers, for God’s sake—but no-one has ever said anything. It’s not that Emily isn’t bothered, because she often is, and visibly too; it’s that she doesn’t flinch. Everyone has a tic. Hotch clouds over and thinks about Jack, Penelope sprints through her words, Reid runs through all the statistics and probabilities because numbers are easier than people, easier than a corpse. Morgan keeps moving but in his eyes there’s a vacancy because he’s stood stock-still somewhere else, heart’s feet planted in a happier time. She isn’t sure about Rossi, but she sees it in his eyes too: he is pulling away, desperately pushing against reality.

She wouldn’t be able to explain it if she had to. What JJ knows is that they share something unique, something that even hardened cops like Will can’t understand. It’s abnormal, the kind of thing that would throw up red flags on a psych eval if it wasn’t such an isolate experience.

Here’s what happens:

She pulls away from the mouth of hell and looks away from the figures burning inside; she refuses to see their faces, to acknowledge them as human. But they are human, but they aren’t. Blame their brain chemistry, their abuse, their isolation. Ignore the fact that the mentally ill are less likely to be violent than the general populace, ignore the myriad abuse victims who haven’t hurt a soul, ignore the ostracized people who feel guilt or shame instead of burning hate. Ignore Reid, ignore Hotch and Morgan, ignore Rossi, ignore Penelope, ignore yourself, ignore Emily. Forget that everyone around you is a live wire, a loose cannon, because they aren’t. They’re like you. They are horrified.

The BAU has historically had an impressively high turnover rate because people don’t know how to look without seeing, how to think of humanity as endemic, how to say _you’re not like me_ and know it is a lie but believe it nevertheless. JJ is pretty sure Emily doesn’t do that.

Which is why Emily’s smile fades a second too late, and blinks and slightly purses her lips before she joins into the new conversation.

“Yeah,” she says at length, drawing out the syllable ever so slightly to buy an extra second. “Jordan says she won’t be coming back.”

“Shame,” Penelope says, then throws a stricken look at JJ. “I mean—not like you’re not better—the best—I’d take you back over her in a second, obviously—but she’s—”

“She’s great,” JJ says with a smile. “I know. It’s always sad to see someone scared off so soon.”

“She’s never going to be the same, you know,” Reid says, and they all nod and shudder.

iv.

The most fucked up thing JJ has ever done, without a doubt, is what she is doing now, which is wishing she’d miscarried, or had an abortion, or seen something in Will’s post-coital expression and raced to the nearest pharmacy for Plan B and a tub of ice cream to soothe the break-up.

“Mommy’s a bad person,” she croons to Henry, rocking him gently in her arms. “Oh yes she is, _oh yes she is_ —mommy’s a mean, selfish person, oh yes she is.”

He blinks sleepily and yawns up at her, and he is so precious and so important and _God_ , he deserves so much better. He does not deserve the years of sitters he’s going to endure, or the bizarre extended family of faux aunts and uncles that her BAU connections will bestow upon him. He does not deserve what his future holds, which is probably nightmares about his mother’s work and getting ‘the birds and the bees’ explained to him by Reid, with Penelope probably attempting to moderate. He’ll get Morgan and Emily, at least, because like it or not they’re the most acceptable of the BAU team, provided you don’t look too closely.

“That’s right,” she whispers as she lays him gently into his crib, smoothing his blonde hair across his forehead with her thumb. “Mommy needs to get out of this room so she stops talking to herself, doesn’t she?”

“Should I come back later?”

JJ bites back a scream as she whirls to face Emily, who is standing in the hall with a bag of groceries in each hand, grinning from ear to ear.

“I—”

“Maybe _mommy_ wants to help with the groceries?” Emily asks, smirking as she brandishes the bags.

Okay—it looks like she didn’t hear that first part. JJ presses a cold hand to her burning cheeks and grins sheepishly. “Y—yeah.”

“Maybe _mommy_ needs to take up jogging again,” Emily half-jokes as she hands JJ the bag in her left hand.

“Yeah, God. Is it that obvious?”

“Even if I hadn’t walked in to hear you telling Henry you’re a bad person—”

_Shit_ —

“—I’d still assume you’re going crazy in here with no one to help you.”

Emily looks up from the groceries she’s spread on the counter while talking—an array of fresh produce and canned goods, the high-quality organic kind that costs an arm and a leg, but that’s Emily for you—and snorts at the expression on JJ’s face.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” she says. “It’s not like you actually are a bad person.”

“I mean—”

“You wish you hadn’t had him, right?” Emily doesn’t need a response—she’s a profiler, for Christ’s sake. She could probably smell the regret from the hall. “You wish you were bringing him into a better world, in better circumstances, right? It’s not wrong of you to wish your kid could have the best possible life.”

“I—that means wishing he was _dead_ ,” JJ says helplessly. She drops the bag on the floor and sags against the countertop, because it’s this or cry. _Shit_ , she thinks as that familiar ache presses against the back of her eyes. She’s going to do both.

The loud clink of glass on glass when JJ drops the bag makes Emily wince. She takes a half-step forward, then hovers uncomfortably. Neither of them are entirely sure what Emily should do, JJ realizes. She wants a hug but she also kind of wants Emily to scream at her, to tell her she’s a monster or hit her or _something_. Just a touch of revulsion, absolutely no pity.

Emily takes another step forward and touches JJ’s cheek with her hand, which is warm and mostly soft, except for ridges of callus and half-healed scabs on the sides of her fingertips from where she bites the skin when her nails are too far gone.

This is all so fucked up. _They_ ’re so fucked up—self-loathing as a form of penance, JJ thinks as the rough edge of Emily’s pinky slides under the edge of her jawbone. She’s so preoccupied by the sensation—it takes the first paroxysm of a sob for her to realize she’s crying now. And Emily isn’t looking at her with pity, or disgust, but with an emptiness in her eyes, a sympathy.

It’s not empathy—JJ isn’t sure if Emily _does_ empathy—but it’s something so intimately connected that she cries harder, and now Emily wraps her left arm around her, never taking her hand off JJ’s cheek.

“You’re a great mother,” Emily says quietly as JJ presses her face into her hair and neck to stifle her tears. “You’re always going to be a great mother. Henry couldn’t have asked for someone who cares more, who loves more.”

“Tell me it’s going to be okay,” JJ says, hearing the note of desperation in her voice and thinking, _fuck it, it’s not like I’m_ not _a mess anyway._ No one says it’s going to be okay anymore, especially not in the BAU—where, arguably, they need it the most.

“It’s going to be better than okay,” Emily says, then releases her grip so she can hold JJ by the shoulder and look her in the eye. “I swear to God, JJ. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Emily’s eyes are dark brown, almost black, and earnest. When JJ sniffles and nods, she can see the faintest hint of smile lines at their corners. Her hand is still on her cheek, slightly damp from JJ’s tears.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” JJ repeats.

Emily smiles. “That’s my girl.”

That’s what does it—that’s what JJ will tell herself did it tomorrow, and every day after that as long as she still thinks about this moment.

“I—” she says, then bites her lip. How does she begin to— _God_. Emily’s a profiler, why can’t she just profile the way JJ’s pressed her face into her palm and understand that something clicked in JJ’s heart when she looked up from her infant son and saw Emily doused in light in the hall, looking for all the world like she belonged there, like she was a part of that home? Why can’t she see JJ’s indecision and know that it’s fear, it’s damage, it’s postpartum, and she can’t say it because one more rejection would kill her, maybe, and one more isolation definitely would? Why can’t Emily read her mind?

“Yeah?”

“I don’t—”

Fuck it, JJ thinks. She closes their distance and presses her hand to Emily’s cheek.

“Oh,” Emily says.

JJ’s heart is beating so fast it feels like one solid, unending beat.

Then: “Oh thank God,” Emily says, and presses her forehead to JJ’s, and wraps her free arm around JJ’s waist, and closes her eyes and just breathes.

“Oh thank God,” JJ echoes, and Emily laughs in a breathy giggle that is uncharacteristic and contagious.

Emily releases her cheek now and drapes her arm over JJ’s neck. She’s more than slightly taller, so their faces are inches apart and JJ smiles up at her, nervous as all hell but glowing at the edges.

It would be better if she wasn’t snotty and red-eyed, and if she wasn’t barefoot in mismatched pajamas, but it’s fine, and sometimes fine is all that JJ needs.

v.

Coming home to JJ, Emily thinks, then stops the train of thought and discards whatever trite simile she might otherwise have used. There isn’t a comparison to be drawn because there’s nothing like it, nothing like embracing in the mouth of Hell and believing you’re in Heaven.

There’s nothing like thinking you’re not alone as you traverse the family tree of human depravity, as you snap from neuron to neuron with a killer’s murderous impulse, trying desperately to keep pace because the alternative—

The alternative is blood on your hands and your hands are soaked.

It isn’t her fault but she blames herself. It isn’t her fault but imagine if she’d moved faster, imagine if she’d known—

Coming home to JJ—with JJ—absolves that, Emily thinks. Because JJ can look her in the eyes when she herself can’t and she can accept evil while Emily can only compartmentalize and ignore it.

And—and Emily thinks this when JJ smiles and there is light behind her eyes—they are good for each other.

Henry called her ‘mama’ yesterday and she thought, _of course_.

It isn’t perfect, because nothing can be perfect when you’ve seen what she’s seen and lived what she’s lived. But it’s fine. It’s enough measure of Heaven—JJ brushes a soft kiss along her cheekbone—that it balances everything out.

She stops dreaming about Ian Doyle, about that nameless, lifeless fetus. She stops running, for the first time in years. She tells JJ everything, up to and including the part where she loves her helplessly, hopelessly, dreamlessly.

And JJ says, “I love you,” like she’s never seen death and violence and cruelty. Like she hasn’t seen the way love can transmute itself into obsession and hate. It’s past midnight, but Emily feels like their room is full of sun, dust dancing aimlessly through languid beams of light, warmth pouring inexorable through the windows and over them, radiance sparkling over the fine blonde hairs on JJ’s skin and painting them both bright shades of giddy.


End file.
